


Phoenix

by xJane



Category: SKAM (France)
Genre: Fire, M/M, Some slurs against mental diseases if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 04:40:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29879208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xJane/pseuds/xJane
Summary: It burns brightly against the night sky. The flames dance red and yellow and orange, the wood cracks and crumbles and crackles, ash dances in the air like lightning bugs.It is beautiful. It is warm. It is safety. It is life and it can be death.Some people fear the fire, scared of its power to escape control, of the risk of raging blazes taking over and leaving only destruction and cold ash blanketing the scorched earth.Some people light the fire, build a place where it is warm and inviting, where it smells of home and food and belonging.Some people fight the fire, douse it in water or sand, wrestle it and tame it, until they believe they are its masters.But the fire cannot be controlled, and it patiently waits its time.***The working title for this one was pyRomantic!Lucas. That, and Eliott in a firefighter uniform, is really all you should know.***Or, the one where love literally burns.
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant
Comments: 21
Kudos: 44





	Phoenix

**Author's Note:**

> This is a bit of a different fic than most of my work. I think it is a bit more melancholic, a bit more wistful, a bit more introspective, a lot quieter and calmer.
> 
> I hope you'll like it anyway.
> 
> <3

_It burns brightly against the night sky. The flames dance red and yellow and orange, the wood cracks and crumbles and crackles, ash dances in the air like lightning bugs._

_It is beautiful. It is warm. It is safety. It is life and it can be death._

_Some people fear the fire, scared of its power to escape control, of the risk of raging blazes taking over and leaving only destruction and cold ash blanketing the scorched earth._

_Some people light the fire, build a place where it is warm and inviting, where it smells of home and food and belonging._

_Some people fight the fire, douse it in water or sand, wrestle it and tame it, until they believe they are its masters._

_But the fire cannot be controlled, and it patiently awaits its time._

*~*

Lucas had spent hours staking out the field, calculating the distances to any structure or to the small forested area bordering it on the northeast, checking the weather forecasts, clearing out the area he would need to set up his structure, and making sure nobody would be too close, yet the area wouldn’t be totally deserted either. Then he had dedicated his free time to make the outline of the Ursa Minor constellation, with painstaking detail, measuring the distances between the stars, and making sure Polaris was the brightest, and would burn the longest. And then he had waited, for weeks, until the conditions were perfect – dry, not too much wind, clear skies, sunset at 22.18, and the right fire crew on service.

He has bought the dark clothes, the hat, the mask, the gloves. He has made sure he had several ignition sources on him, a compass to check that the stars point exactly where they should point, and the gasoline.

After all that meticulous preparation, the actual execution goes off without a hitch. He places the parts on the ground, after a last sweep for any stray debris, a last gaze around, and lights it up.

Then he runs.

He hides away, so he will not be spotted. But he will be looking at them. His dad’s old binoculars will serve him well.

From the edge of the small copse of trees he watches.

He waits anxiously.

It takes longer than expected. Maybe next time he should call it in himself. With the field being so far away from everything, he had thought it would take a while before anybody noticed, but still. He needs them to get here before the message is lost. He needs to tweak that, next time.

There will be a next time.

Because he doesn’t expect Eliott to get the message the first time around.

*~*

Sirens wailing, they arrive at the field. It hasn’t been in use for a few years. The farmer and his wife retired and moved to a service flat in town, and nobody has taken over yet.

The blaze seems to be almost dead in the middle of the field, far enough away from the old farm house and barn to be a danger to them, and likewise far enough from the little wooded area in the other direction.

But what the hell would burn out here? And how would a fire start out here?

Eliott supposes it might have been some teenagers, coming out to drink and smoke, being uncareful with a cigarette. But the dry earth shouldn’t burn like this. Maybe they had made a camp fire, roasted some s’mores, and hadn’t made sure there were no live embers when they left?

Still, though.

Whatever is burning there is big.

He jumps out of the truck before it comes to a complete standstill, and grabs the hose, yelling at his squad to hurry. There may not be any immediate danger of the fire spreading to any other fuel source, but it never hurts to make sure. And maybe somebody is in trouble, and needs their assistance.

Eliott is the first to reach the middle of the field.

And there, on the ground, is –

It looks like some sort of structure, with flammable plywood and rope, and the clear smell of gasoline every firefighter knows so well.

Arson.

Eliott swears. He really doesn’t want to deal with an arsonist. Even if this one seems to have taken care to do his foul deeds where it wouldn’t cause too much damage.

But if somebody just wanted to set a fire for the fun of it, then what about the structure? It seems familiar, somehow – thin lines connecting bundles burning brightly.

Then, suddenly, he notices how one dot seems to glow more vividly and intense than the others, and it clicks. This is Ursa Minor, and the brighter dot is Polaris. The north star. A guide to those who wander, and to those who are lost.

Eliott likes to think he doesn’t wander anymore, nor is he lost any longer. Nevertheless, Polaris is still his guide, even though he found stability in the fire department. But stability is not all he craves. There is still something missing, something he hopes his guiding star will still lead him to.

But now is not the time to follow it.

He turns on the hose as soon as his colleague shouts that they have connected it to the well, and starts dousing his star.

*~*

Lucas’ ancient binoculars do the trick. He sees how Eliott stares at his message, and he hopes Eliott has figured it out before somebody yells at him and he starts extinguishing Lucas’ work.

It hurts a bit, that. Eliott ruthlessly drenching Lucas’ message, as if he doesn’t want it.

The fire brigade douses his work in water, tramples all over it, and the steam and smoke make it hard for Lucas to see Eliott. That hurts even more.

But even though the message sputters and dies after a good ten minutes of work by the firemen, it doesn’t matter in the end. Lucas’ love burns a lot steadier.

And he has a plan.

He knows there will be a next time. And he has learned what to do better.

He has to make sure Eliott sees his message, and understands it.

So he goes home, and starts all over again. Another field, slightly smaller, but not in use. Overgrown with clover which Lucas clears, carefully, by hand, one by one, because only his notes to Eliott should burn, not anything else. A new set of calculations, distances, scales.

A new trip to the home improvement store. Wood, rope, flammable paint. A cannister of gasoline. A new lighter, in case the other one is empty after the first use.

This time, he makes a rose. He is no artist, so he prints something from the internet, and enlarges it until it reaches the size he wants.

And then, as before. Checking the fire department’s schedules surreptitiously. Following up the weather conditions religiously, memorizing the times of sunset perfectly.

Waiting. Wanting, so much wanting.

Searching for a place to watch but not be seen.

And then, the lucifer, the elegant bow of the tiny flame through the cold night air, and the whooshing sound when the structure catches fire.

*~*

Eliott knows as soon as the phone call comes in.

The arsonist.

Who else would light a fire at night, in an empty field at the edge of town?

He hasn’t been able to get the first time out of his head. The fire marshal has investigated, of course. Arson is nothing to sneeze at, never mind that nobody got hurt, no property destroyed. Eliott had been torn. He had wanted the culprit to be found – he didn’t want them to escalate, until inevitably their actions would lead to tragedy and loss. But then again – he also had wanted them to remain free, maybe even make another of these fire paintings.

He looks up at the sky whenever he can, trying to find Polaris, and admitting he still needs help to turn onto the right path – the path to the final missing part.

Because there is still something lacking, something he hasn’t found yet.

Eliott is loved all over town – the handsome hero firefighter, open and generous, charming and friendly to everybody. But there is another kind of love he desires.

The soft love of coming home late at night and having somebody waiting for him at the kitchen table, half asleep, but still ready to have a cup of tea with him. The steady love of having somebody putting a cool hand on his feverish temple when he is crashing, of calming words spoken when he is flying too high. The stable love of kissing somebody for the millionth time and still feeling a spark inside.

Eliott has enough excitement in his life. He knows that flashy fires burn out the fastest. He wants the slow, glowing embers that would survive the night, to be rekindled with a puff of breath in the morning.

What he doesn’t need is a serial arsonist.

But still, when they reach the field, he runs.

Because that is his job, of course, to run towards the danger, to be the first on the scene, to save the day.

But this time, he runs because of another reason.

Today, he runs because it is them. The arsonist.

And when he reaches the flames, he immediately figures it out.

It is a rose.

It reminds him of Romeo and Juliet, of all the poetry he has read, of unconditional love.

He looks at it, while somebody is connecting the hose. He wonders – is Polaris leading him here? Is Polaris telling him he needs to look for love here?

He shouldn’t be distracted. It is a fire, and he fights fires. That is what he does. Maybe Polaris is telling him he should fight the longing for love, because it is not for him.

So he goes at the flames with his full force as soon as the water pressure is up, but somewhere inside him, he feels bad about extinguishing this. It is fiery, flaming, fierce, but it is art, somehow. And Eliott has never not appreciated art.

*~*

Lucas has to be careful. There are only so many gas stations where you can buy a cannister of gas. There are only so many hobby stores stocking cheap wood.

And there are only so many places where it is safe to set up a six square feet flaming structure.

And the fire marshal is called in after each fire, and he is getting angry. He has become ever more thorough, checking for footprints in the dry mud, trying to dust the charred wood for fingerprints, looking around for cigarette buts or anything to lift DNA from.

But Lucas is smart. He isn’t going to be caught.

Unless it is by Eliott.

He has become bolder, after the first few messages. He looked at Eliott’s Instagram, and he has traced parts of the firefighter’s own sketches. This time, it is an hourglass. The sand falls slowly, but with a feeling of inevitability, of loss, of longing.

Lucas is patient. He has to be, to wait for the time when all the circumstances are perfect.

He can wait. One day, Eliott will understand. Will know that Lucas is leaving him these messages the only way he knows how to. The only way he is brave enough to.

Because the firefighter, the hero who saved little Molly when she got stuck in a tree, who managed to extinguish a fire threatening to burn down the library, who rescued the mayor’s wife who had somehow ended up in the river in her new car, who delivered old Mrs. Mills from a wasp nest, the handsome man who had all the girls fighting for his attention whenever he went to the local bar to have a few beers, who flirted as easily as he breathed, that man – that man would never look at Lucas twice.

Lucas, who is shy and has moved here with his mom and didn’t know anybody, hasn’t found a way to make new friends, to fit in. Lucas, who works from home, as a boring accountant for a firm in Paris, who sometimes forgets what day it is and works the whole Saturday. Lucas, who has been taking care of his mom for so long that most people in town think he is a bit mad himself. Lucas, who has bumped into Eliott at the post office, and who was dumbstruck. And who has tried, really, to find ways to talk to Eliott like normal people would. He had gone to the bar. He had waited in his car until he saw Eliott get into the grocery store, and then he went after him, determined to find some way to talk to him over the vegetable aisle, but then he never did.

Lucas, who has been alone for so long he is unsure he knows how to use his voice anymore.

So he uses fire.

It is the only way.

*~*

Eliott is certain the messages are for him after the fifth time. Polaris, a rose, a stylized detail from Klimt’s “Kiss”, an outline of Cupid shooting an arrow, those could have been coincidences – Eliott’s overactive imagination conjuring up a connection that wasn’t there, just because Eliott is falling in love and he wants so badly to believe that somebody, something, is telling him to jump, to take the chance.

He tries to forget about the flaming drawings, tries to reason with himself. The idea of the universe guiding him towards love is preposterous.

And then the fifth one happens, and it is a familiar hourglass. Eliott has drawn that hourglass. He has posted it on his Instagram.

He looks around, wishing the arsonist would show themselves.

Eliott knows he should tell the fire marshal. But what if his arsonist is caught? They don’t really do anything wrong. They pick safe locations, they pick nights when there is no risk of the wind spreading the flames.

He doesn’t like calling them “the arsonist” anymore either. They are not an arsonist. If they were, they’d be setting out to do as much damage as they could. Instead, they went out of their way to keep things safe.

Of course, they were still setting fires on purpose, which is a crime, wasting resources by drawing out the fire department, and maybe unwillingly causing an issue if somebody else would ever need help while they were working one of their scenes.

Still.

Eliott can’t help but feel wooed. It is… romantic. He has a secret admirer, a pyromaniac romantic soul. A pyromantic.

Eliott loves being courted with flames. He fights fire, yes, but he is in awe of its strength, its power, its necessity too. And its beauty.

But then he remembers – the flashy fires burn out the fastest.

He is in a bad mood for the rest of the night.

*~*

The weather does not cooperate. They have had a long, calm summer, but now it well and truly has withered into fall, and the trees are dripping with rain.

Lucas usually does not mind the rain, used as he is to stay indoors, watching the drops glide down over the window while he dreams about belonging somewhere, about shattering the glass that keeps him separated from everybody else.

But now, it is utterly inconvenient. Lucas needs the autumn rains to give way to the cold, crisp winter air. He has been building his next message to Eliott, and he is beyond ready to send it.

It is a raccoon, like the one Eliott keeps drawing and posting on his Instagram account, and it has taken Lucas days to calculate the distance and the curves of the lines, to be able to scale it up perfectly.

But now it is ready, has been ready for weeks, and it just sits there, in their old shed, next to the matches and the gasoline and the lighters and the zippo blocks.

Lucas kills time by watching videos on YouTube, of fires and of fire safety trainings. He could probably become a firefighter himself by now, since he knows exactly how to deal with the chimney effect, or how accelerants affect a flame, or how smoke can make a room explode within minutes.

Sometimes, he imagines applying at the fire station. Belonging to the same group of hardy men as Eliott does. It is a nice daydream, but Lucas knows nothing could ever come off it. Firefighters are brave and heroic, not cowards too afraid to walk up to the man they love, like Lucas.

Lucas was unsure of the word love, at first.

He can still hear his mom talk about love, a long time ago, when Lucas still remembered the way his dad had smelled and sounded. She had been bitter and callous, had dismissed the idea of it. “A spark, Lucas,” she had said, “and people believe it is something worthy and wonderful, something to build lives upon, something to cross oceans for. But it’s just a spark. Love doesn’t happen like that.”

Lucas had believed her, for the longest time. But then he had met Eliott, and the spark had zinged through him. He had worried it would die fast – but it hadn’t. It had started with one small, fragile flame, ready to die at the softest sigh, but Lucas had protected it fiercely, and it had grown, like all fires start with one lucifer and grow with a lot of care. And that’s when Lucas had realized that all fires die if they have no fuel, and he had fuelled his love, fanned it carefully, until it burned through him like wildfire, magnificent and overpowering everything else.

And he knows love is just another word for the fire in his heart.

*~*

It is still raining. Every firefighter in the world is happy for heavy rains like this. Except for Eliott. Eliott is praying for dry weather. It has been weeks since there has been a sign of life from his pyromantic admirer, and Eliott misses them. He knows there is nothing to be done in this weather, yet he also worries. What if they have given up? What if Eliott has taken too long to figure it out, and they have moved on?

It doesn’t help that he is falling in love, hard and fast, with a man he met in the pub, recently.

The man had been sitting alone in a corner, drinking a beer, nursing it through the better part of the evening – much like Eliott did, not wanting to mess up his medicine too much with the alcohol – and hardly spoke. But his eyes told Eliott numerous stories, of adventure and excitement, and yet of domesticity and security at the same time.

Somebody had told him about the stranger – he moved in from Paris a few years ago, with his mother, and there were rumours that they were both not quite stable, mentally. The townspeople had hardly ever seen the mother, and the son did their groceries and ran their errands, but he was withdrawn and silent, polite but ever so slightly cold.

Eliott didn’t think his eyes were cold. Quite the opposite – they were warm and welcoming, intriguing and inviting, changing with the light and yet constant as the beacon of a lighthouse, calling Eliott to shore.

He had even tried to talk to the man, and he had managed to introduce himself and get a name in return, but it had been offered almost reluctantly, and the blue of his eyes had been startled, his mouth had been tight and Eliott had felt like he had been unwelcome, and he had left with a heavy weight in his chest.

At least, Eliott has a name to dream about, a name to whisper in the long, wet nights when no call comes about a fire in a barren field.

And then, the weather forecast promises dry weather, and Eliott just knows.

*~*

Finally, the winds turn, and instead of rain from the east, they now bring cool air from the west.

Lucas dresses warmly against the brisk air, and gets to work. He has this all down to a science by now – getting the parts out of the car, driving the car somewhere far enough away to not be noticed, assemble everything, sprinkle the gasoline liberally, lighting the whole thing up, admiring it for no longer than 45 seconds, and get out to a place where he can watch the arrival of the fire department with his trusty binoculars.

They are fast, tonight.

Eliott, as always, is out of the truck the first, and runs to the burning structure, and – stops dead in his tracks.

Lucas has an excellent view. He can see the shock in Eliott’s stormy grey eyes, see the twist of disbelief around the red lips, the colour that rises high on his sharp jaws.

He doesn’t know if Eliott has figured it out yet, the fact that these flaming presents are meant just for him, but after tonight, he definitely knows.

Lucas hears some other fireman yell, and this is when Eliott will need to start dousing the flames, but nothing of the sort happens. Eliott just stands there, still, dumbstruck, until another guy runs past him, shoves him harshly in the shoulder, and starts doing his job, the high arch of the water hissing when it reaches the flames.

Eliott seems to wake up from a dream, and gets with the program. Lucas hopes it was not a nightmare– but either way, now he knows. Now Eliott knows.

And then, suddenly, just as the last flame dies and there is nothing but acrid smoke wafting up in the sky and sodden ashes left from Lucas’ love letter to Eliott, he realizes that it doesn’t change a thing.

Yes, Eliott knows now, and that is that. He doesn’t know who left the messages for him. And even if he does… He might not even appreciate them. He might hate whoever did this for calling him and his colleagues out in the middle of the night.

No, Lucas has to admit his plan was flawed from the start. He has won nothing. Eliott is as far out of reach as ever, and Lucas will never be able to get up to him, confess who left him the blazing messages, and why.

Lucas can’t wait any longer. Usually, he would watch until the firemen left, the marshal having done his check of the scene, Eliott making sure there were no hidden embers that might catch flame again after they left.

Not tonight. Lucas feels as if his own fire had been extinguished just as efficiently as the burning raccoon. He is doomed to watch Eliott from afar, admire him from the corner of the pub, where he is not really welcome. He is forever forced to remain cooped up in the house alone until he becomes crazy and unstable.

He has to stop playing with fire – in all senses of the word.

*~*

Eliott is in a daze.

What he has suspected – hoped – is now clear as day, at least to him.

The fires are some sort of message for him.

But why? Who? What?

And has any of his colleagues, who know he tends to sketch raccoons, noticed the outline of the animal? Are they even now thinking back of the other fires, connecting the dots, putting two and two together?

And then there is… the other thing.

The figure he thought he saw slinking away from a tiny shed, a few hundred meters from the burning raccoon. He had never noticed anybody before, except for the few curious onlookers they’d usually get during an operation, but this had been… different. Something who had hidden away, presumably to watch, and then slipped away when the flames were doused, their job done.

It must have been his pyromantic.

He hopes nobody else noticed the slight movement, the graceful figure slipping away unseen in the dark.

For the first time ever, Eliott wishes his shift would go faster, so that he could drive back out and go look at the shed, trying to figure out who had been watching them – or him?

For the first time, he also feels apprehensive. Why would this person, whoever they were, leave them messages in the form of burning designs? What did they hope to achieve? Why didn’t they just come talk to them? Maybe they didn’t have a lovely message, maybe it was something more sinister. Maybe they were stalking him, luring him out, until they’d set a trap for him on one of these trips out –

No, Eliott refuses to believe that. He has been called optimistic and naïve his whole life, and he will not change now.

In his dreams, the small figure looks at him from their hiding place, and their eyes are startingly and familiarly blue, like a fire burning at its hottest, most desperate point.

*~*

Lucas decides to make one last message for Eliott. It is cheesy and stupid, but he has to make sure Eliott understands.

So he builds a huge, burning heart, like Lucas’ heart is burning for Eliott.

It is larger than anything he ever did before, and it will burn long and deep and bright in the cold night air.

He is anxious to get it done, before snow and rhyme will start covering the ground and he would have to wait until spring and warmer temperatures again.

So maybe – maybe – he makes a mistake somewhere.

Maybe he should have waited for a wind-still night. Maybe his hand shook too much when he upended the gas canister. Maybe the size of the structure had caught him off guard, his normal safety measures insufficient.

Whatever the case, Lucas, who’d been so adamant he burned for Eliott all this time, literally catches fire.

His nylon windbreaker must have caught a spark somehow, and before Lucas knows it, the synthetic fabric is flaming. Quickly, he shrugs it off, and he did come prepared with water and fire blankets, so he can kill it quickly – but still, his arm bears, quite literally, the brunt of it.

*~*

For some reason, Eliott thinks there will be no more messages from his pyromantic. The heart was huge, and it made the message clear. And then there’s the matter of the burnt nylon the fire marshal found. It was too damaged to recognize the colours, or to be able to lift any useful clues from it, but it’s clear the arsonist made a mistake, somehow.

It saddens Eliott, to know that somebody cared enough about him to send him these signs, to talk to Eliott in such a romantic way, with love letters for the world to see, and that now it will be over, and Eliott is no closer to figuring out who it is.

And then the winter weather hits, and the cold seeps into Eliott’s bones, and without any warning, he crashes into one of the worst depressive episodes he ever had. Idriss comes by with soup, and forces Eliott to shower every few days, but it takes weeks before he is able to leave his bed.

He doesn’t tell Idriss that he dreams jumbled images of blazing hearts and blue eyes, fiery letters spelling out Eliott’s name, Lucas’ small voice offering his name from behind a half-empty beer glass, fires consuming him, Lucas saving him, Lucas burning his arm.

It is midwinter by the time Eliott is up to leaving the house again, and freezing, but his feet take him to the pub, and he sits at the bar and talks to the people who come to greet him, happy to see he is better – but his eyes slide over to the corner, to the empty table, where no blue eyes and tentative small smile beckon him over.

Eliott gets back to work, and he falls into the usual rhythm: a chimney fire, a tree fallen in a storm blocking a road, another tree threatening a house.

Winter passes, and makes way for spring, and the melting snow swells the rivers, and the fire department gets called out a few times to protect houses with sandbags, or to pump flooded cellars.

And spring passes too, and summer comes along, and it’s been a year since the burning Polaris, and Eliott feels something tug at his heart.

He goes out to the pub, as he has been doing, once or twice a week, talking and laughing and dancing and buying drinks for the occasional pretty girl, but never seeing a small figure at the corner table, and he goes home alone, his footsteps heavy.

He doesn’t dare to ask about Lucas, and when he enters the pub, the air conditioning chilly, making him shiver, he forces himself not to look at the corner table, to go straight to the bar and order a beer. Today of all days he cannot handle any more disappointment.

So he sits, nurses his drink, regales the regulars with some stories from the station, and ignores the irrational sadness encumbering his heart.

And then, after more than an hour, his eyes find their way to the lonely small corner table, and –

Lucas sits there, a beer glass in front of him. His phone lies on the table, but when Eliott’s eyes find him, he is staring straight at Eliott. He is fast to bow his head, though, but not fast enough. Eliott sees the red staining Lucas’ cheeks, and it reminds him of the red of fire. A heart on fire. A star on fire.

Eliott orders two beers, ignoring the bartender’s raised eyebrow, and takes them over to the corner.

He sits down clumsily, almost spilling the drinks, and slides one to Lucas. Lucas gasps, but doesn’t say anything, just nods and accepts the beer, stretches out his arm to grab the glass.

And that’s when Eliott notices it.

Red, raised welts.

Burn scars.

*~*

Lucas knows he messed up when Eliott breaths out heavily and touches his wrist.

The ugly, wrinkled, coiled skin on his left arm is clearly visible.

Eliott doesn’t say anything, doesn’t touch the scars, just holds Lucas’ wrists and looks at it, as if he doesn’t believe what he is seeing, as if he is unsure whether to draw the obvious conclusions.

Lucas tries to find his voice, attempts to remember how to speak, but Eliott is so close, Eliott is touching his arm, the burnt skin – and Lucas, quiet, withdrawn Lucas, knows he will not be able to explain in words, if at all.

After a long, heavy silence, Lucas slowly lifts his eyes from the ugly mess his arm presents, and looks at Eliott.

Eliott mirrors his small motion.

“Does it hurt?”

Lucas shakes his head, and as if he was waiting for permission, Eliott trails his fingers over the ridges and valleys. Lucas thought the area was mostly numb, but Eliott’s fingertips set something ablaze inside him, something that starts small and insignificant but swells to a roaring intensity in seconds, like the tiny lucifers Lucas used to light his messages to Eliott.

“When did you get this?” Eliott asks on a shaky breath, whispering softly.

Lucas inhales sharply, but remains silent. He knows the exact date, the exact hour, the exact spot – but he cannot tell Eliott.

And then Eliott tells him.

“It was you,” he says, incredulously. “All this time, it was you.”

Lucas feels cold all of a sudden. Maybe Eliott hated the messages. Maybe Eliott doesn’t want to know who left them. Maybe Eliott is disappointed, now that he figured out who they came from.

But Eliott doesn’t let go of his wrist, doesn’t look away.

And Lucas nods, and smiles, carefully, all muscles tensed, ready to bolt at the first sign of unease in Eliott.

None comes.

Eliott smiles, and his fingertips rest on Lucas’ heartbeat.

The beers are forgotten, when they wordlessly get up, and leave.

*~*

They don’t speak as they walk through the quiet town. Eliott goes into the direction of his house, and Lucas doesn’t object.

It is only when Eliott lets him in and closes the door behind him, that Lucas looks him in the eye again.

He doesn’t know what to say now, or what to do. Lucas is so beautiful, but so quiet. He stares at Eliott like a deer into headlights, and Eliott is afraid that one wrong move will spook him and make him run.

“I hoped it was you,” he mumbles, unsure if he wants Lucas to hear or not. Lucas hears him, and his eyes go wider than ever.

He still doesn’t speak, though.

Eliott moves closer.

“They were beautiful,” he says softly. His voice is lower than usual, this close to Lucas. He can see Lucas’ pupils dart around, his nostrils flare slightly. “Thank you.”

He places a hand carefully on Lucas’ jaw.

It is as if the floodgates have been opened.

Lucas speaks very fast.

“I was worried you’d hate them. I tried to be as careful as I could, but they were still fire and you are a firefighter, you hate fire, and it hurt when you extinguished them, but I understood, really, they had to be put out, but it felt like my heart burned more every time you doused one of them and I –”

He has to stop to take a breath, and before he can continue, Eliott moves his hand to put a finger against his lips. They are plump and soft and Eliott wants to kiss them, badly.

“I don’t hate fire. I respect it. Fire is powerful and mysterious and life-giving. And I loved your art. I didn’t want to extinguish it, but we had to. But maybe you can make one for me, one day, and we’ll go somewhere and we won’t extinguish it, just let it burn its course until it dies down.”

Lucas smiles against Eliott’s finger, and Eliott is so far gone for this boy, honestly.

He knows they have to talk. He has heard the gossip about Lucas’ mom, about Lucas. He has some stuff to share, too. They will talk and set the record straight on what got blown out of proportion by the hearsay and they will deal with what the gossip got right.

But not now.

Now, he wants to just marvel that Lucas is here, that his pyromantic is here, and that they light a fire inside when they finally kiss.

*~*

Some years later, on a summer night much like the one they first kissed on, Eliott and Lucas go to a field outside town, and Lucas lights the structure he made, the last one he ever will build. It blazes red in the night air in the shape of a big question mark, and when Eliott turns towards him, he is kneeling and holds open a small jewellery box, silently looking up at Eliott. 

Eliott stares at Lucas, and remembers how he had wished upon Polaris to show him his path. He kisses Lucas, and they watch the flames slowly lick at the thin wood until there is nothing left. He drives out the next day with their tallest ladder car, climbs as high as he can get, and hangs a banner from the church. It reads, in big red letters, “YES”.

They celebrate their wedding on a cold winter’s day. Their guests are told to bundle up. Eliott and Lucas keep each other warm, and when the sun sets, they light a gigantic bonfire. The flames reflect in their eyes, brighter than any star, and their hearts burn hotter than the fire.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave me a comment if you like, I would appreciate it a lot!
> 
> And if you really enjoyed it, you can [buy me a coffee](https://ko-fi.com/xjane).
> 
> <3


End file.
